


just need one last nail

by firstaudrina



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Minor Character Death, alternate version of events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 16:51:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7540447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He made the choice she wanted him to make. He made the wrong one. </p>
<p>2x05 AU in which Matt does kill Roscoe Sweeney that night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just need one last nail

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at [this ficathon](http://scorpiod1.livejournal.com/108115.html?thread=2350931#t2350931).

Matt remembers his father's face, a Jackson Pollock of blood and bruising. He remembers the feeling of the needle and thread in his hands: the tug through the flesh, his dad's wince, the taste of scotch. Matt can never drink scotch without tasting blood, metallic and sharp, in the back of his throat. He knows the concentrated slamming of fists that turned Battlin' Jack Murdock's face from the craggy, grinning guy that always overcooked Matt's eggs to plain old raw meat. He knows because he's doing it now, because Roscoe Sweeney's flesh is melting under his knuckles and all Matt can think of is his father. 

No matter how much trouble he got in, Matt's dad always had something soft in him, something warm. Old ladies used to tell him he had kind eyes when he was buying milk down at the corner bodega and he'd laugh it off, charm them. Matt learned that laugh. He learned other things too. 

Matt touched his father's face when he was dead in the alley. He felt what the bullet left behind. Meat.

For all that Matt has enhanced senses he can't hear a damn thing except white noise rushing in his ears. Is it his heart? His heart is racing, pounding so hard in his chest he's half-afraid it might give out on him. Mostly he is not conscious of his own body at all. It's just rage, just his hands curled so tightly his nails are scoring his palms, just Sweeney coming apart. Then one eye opens in the man's ruined face, one blue eye that, for a moment, is the eye of Matt's father. 

Matt sucks in a ragged breath and spins away. "I can't," he says. "I can't do it, Elektra, it's wrong, I shouldn't have even –"

Her slim pickpocket fingers are on his shaking shoulders. "It's already done, Matthew," she says. "You've already done it."

It doesn't register. "What?"

She makes a gentle hushing noise like someone might to an animal. "Listen, Matthew."

It's harder than it usually is but he lets everything go. He picks through the scent of blood heavy in the air, the sound of their breathing, the sound of their hearts. And he knows then that one heart has stopped. One man is not breathing. And Matt crumbles.

"I'm here," Elektra is saying, "Matthew, Matthew," he always loved how she said his name, "I'm right here with you."

 

 

 

There are large parts of the night that are blacked out, scratched from his memory, defaced. The only steady thing is Elektra, poisonous Elektra who put it all on the table, cocked her eyebrow, and wanted to know what he was going to do about it. He made the choice she wanted him to make. He made the wrong one. 

She tells him that she'll take care of it, the answer to a question he never asks. _Call the police_ , he thinks he remembers slurring, like a drunk. _Take me in_. Elektra just puts him to bed, tucks him up somewhere as though he were a sick little boy, coddles him with silk sheets and cashmere throws that smelled spicy like her. She goes away for a while. She comes back, curls around him, and she talks.

"The first man I killed, I was a little girl," she tells him. "No, not a man. He was a boy too, but older than me. I could tell you it was self-defense, that he would have killed me. Probably he would have. But I killed him and I felt good, after. Satisfied. Everything is chaos in me but that? That was crystal clear."

"I'm supposed to be a good person," Matt says. Stupid, stupid thing to say.

Elektra kisses his temple. "What's good?"

 

 

 

Matt knows when it's morning because Elektra's loft is all glass and no curtains, so it heats up like crazy as soon as the sun is out. He would always complain to her that it felt like he was being cooked alive, but now it feels good. He sits up in her bed and touches his face, which is lined from the pillow and crusted with crying. He touches one hand and then the other, finding the flesh swollen and hot, his joints getting stiff. His hands will hurt like hell for days. 

A man is dead because of Matt. Elektra would say he deserved it, and maybe she'd be right. But honestly, Elektra doesn't care about people deserving it. She probably shouldn't be Matt's compass in this scenario, she'll never point him north. 

She comes into the room later with a cup of green tea, blowing on its surface lightly so it will become cool enough to drink. Any other morning, for her. "How do you feel, Matthew, hm?"

Elektra doesn't care about people deserving it. But Sweeney did. Sweeney had a list a mile long, and Matt's dad wasn't the only person on it. Elektra doesn't care, but Matt can. Matt does.

He curls his hand into a fist and every knuckle aches with the motion. "Resolved," he says.


End file.
